Participants in last week’s Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey leadership mission meet in a Sderot apartment to learn about Re’ut, a program designed to strengthen the community in Sderot. The federation funded the program through its emergency campaign.
Photos by Amy Cooper
July 10, 2008
Participants on last week’s Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey leadership mission to Israel could not have anticipated that while they were touring buildings reinforced by federation dollars in Sderot, the streets of Jerusalem would come under attack.
An Israeli Arab had taken a bulldozer on a lunchtime rampage on the streets of Jerusalem, killing three people and wounding dozens. Just that morning, the group had left Jerusalem to visit the rocket-stricken city of Sderot.
Thanks to a cease-fire reached between Israel and Hamas, no rockets or mortars were fired at Israel the day that the mission from New Jersey visited Sderot and nearby kibbutzim. The cease-fire enabled mission participants to feel less apprehensive about going there, even though mortars did hit southern Israel the day before the trip and rockets the day after.
But Susan Cahn of Scotch Plains, who visited Israel for the first time on the mission, said she had a strange feeling that an incident would occur on that day. That’s why she wore tennis shoes, just in case she would have to run to safety.
“I had a sixth sense that something was going to happen,” Cahn said. “As anxious as I was about coming to Israel, I was walking calmly in Sderot. I feel guilty for letting my guard down. It’s ironic that this is the day I was most worried about, but it happened in Jerusalem and not here [in Sderot].”
By contrast, Cahn’s friend Jennifer Zairi of Westfield, who lived in Israel for several years, did not agree to attend the mission until she was assured that Sderot would be on the itinerary, because she wanted to show her solidarity with the beleaguered town.
“I can’t let the terrorists delegate where we will go and not go,” Zairi said. “Apparently there is no cease-fire in Jerusalem, so ironically Sderot was the safer place to be today.”
Federation president Gerry Cantor said he was glad that the younger participants on the mission were given an opportunity to see the challenges Israel is facing firsthand and feel what it is like to “suffer together with ordinary Israelis.”
“It was a typical Israeli experience,” Cantor said. “In an ironic twist of fate, we were in the most attacked town in Israel, the site of 7,000 rocket attacks — including 3,500 since the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip three years ago — while terror struck Jerusalem, the city of peace and the place where people feel safest.”
Mission participants were impressed by the solidarity that the people of Sderot felt with their countrymen in Jerusalem; usually, Israelis from other parts of the country are the ones showing solidarity with the beleaguered southern city. The mission’s leaders displayed their own solidarity by not cancelling dinner plans for later that day in Jerusalem, just a block away from Jaffa Road, the street where the attack took place.
In Sderot, the group visited projects supported by the annual UJA-Federation Campaign, the Israel Emergency Campaign, supplemental gifts, and the federation’s endowment. The projects were administered by the Jewish Agency for Israel and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
During the Second Lebanon War two summers ago, UJC’s Israel Emergency Campaign raised $350 million, including $2.8 million via the Central New Jersey federation. The leaders of the local federation decided to earmark a portion of the funds raised to projects in Sderot and the surrounding Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council.
Dany Gliksberg of Ayalim addresses the mission in the gentrified courtyard of an Ayalim “village” in the Shchunat Dalet neighborhood of Beersheva, where students have been renovating apartments. Ayalim receives funds from the federation through its endowment foundation.
The first project the group visited was a senior day-care center at Kibbutz Niram, which provides services to 250 elderly people in area kibbutzim, allowing them to remain in their homes and not move to nursing homes.
At Kibbutz Kfar Aza, which is the closest kibbutz to the Gaza Strip, the group visited an art gallery and learned about Ma’avarim, a small business development service for former farmers that helped the gallery owner get her start. The project helped kibbutz resident Jimmy Kedoshim start a business in aerial photography before he was killed by a Kassam rocket in May.
Lifelong kibbutznik Yankel Zilberstein told the group that before Ma’avarim, he did not know what a bank was, how to pay taxes, or how to run a business. Ma’avarim connected him with a mentor from an Israeli hi-tech company and his business has become a success.
In Sderot, the group visited an impressive sports facility that had not been used until the Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey sponsored the rocket-proofing of its roof a year ago as well as a theater with a new federation-funded sound system. Both facilities help the children of Sderot lead relatively normal lives despite their adverse situation.
The most recent donation the federation made in Sderot went to the Reut program, which has brought to Sderot dozens of young religious Zionist families, who volunteer in the community and act as role models. The families described how the social life, education system, and morale in Sderot had improved since they came.
The group had lunch with Sderot resident Geut Argon, whose home was hit directly by a rocket on Jan. 15 when she was home with her five-year-old son and his friend. Argon described how she managed, despite her bloody face and shrapnel wounds, to evacuate her and the children from the house as the roof crashed down on them.
Argon said she was very grateful to the Jewish Agency for the support it provided from American-Jewish donors during the various stages of the recovery process. She said she immediately received a $1,000 grant from the Agency’s SOS fund to buy everything she needed immediately before the government came in to help. The agency’s terror fund later gave her $6,000.
“Sderot used to be so nice and quiet,” Argon recalled. “We used to go shop in the Gaza market every Saturday with my parents. But now it’s crazy to live like this. It’s hard to see children grow up here the way they do. But we love this city and we don’t want to leave.”
The new owners of a frozen garlic and herb factory in Eshkol, recipient of a Ness Business Loan
Argon said she did not believe in the cease-fire. She recalled how other cease-fires were followed by a worse spate of rocket attacks.
The group saw the fragility of the cease-fire firsthand when it visited the last house hit by a rocket before the truce and drove by the first home hit after the truce took effect.
The earlier rocket hit a posh villa with a plasma television screen and tropical birds and fish. Two weeks after the attack, the house had not yet been repaired and a security guard was stationed there to prevent looting.
The tour of Sderot ended with a visit to what has become known as the Kassam Museum, a display of hundreds of Kassam rockets at the city’s police station. The site reinforced to mission participants the need to report back to their home communities that Israel is under constant threat and the importance of support from the American-Jewish community.
Federation executive vice president Stanley Stone said he was impressed by the people of Sderot and their optimism in spite of everything they have endured over the course of seven years of rocket attacks.
“They symbolize the human spirit,” Stone said. “There is no despair. They are looking to the future and they are positive that things will get better in Sderot and throughout Israel.”
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